As Pride Month comes to a close, Advize continues to celebrate Pride today and every day.  We invite you to celebrate the lives and achievements of LGBTQIA+ beyond this month.  In addition to the legacies of the leaders who have come before us, it’s important to celebrate growing leaders in this space today.

This year we have gotten to know and admire Nurse Practitioner Catherine Obando, or Cathy as she likes to be called.  This week I sat down with Cathy Obando, MSN, APRN, NP-C, to talk about her journey to mindfulness and her opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming major ruling that could dramatically curtail abortion rights.  We are bringing you her story to inspire and share.  Ms. Obando was born in Passaic, NJ and attended Rutgers University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science.  She then embarked on a second career choice, she returned to Passaic County community college and discovered nursing.  It was there that she learned nursing was her passion and rewarding career.  She graduated with her registered nursing/associates degree in applied science and was fortunate to begin her career in the Emergency Department at a local community hospital. 

I can tell you first hand that Cathy is able to look at emergencies and difficult times that would make most people go within and just stop what they are doing but instead, she handles and executes to help those in need get to the other side.

Cathy was motivated beyond the Emergency Room to delve further so she pursued her Masters of Science in Nursing/Nurse Practitioner degree and graduated close to ten years ago with this degree.  She feels fortunate to have found her calling and is now practicing as a Nurse Practitioner at Planned Parenthood of Northern, Central and Southern New Jersey.  As we have been following Supreme Court abortion news, we spoke to Cathy about her real life day-to-day experiences and she shared

“I am so grateful to be able to provide compassionate care to all women.” 

At Advize, we have tons of Nurses who started their career in the ER similar to Cathy and have had a passion for helping people in other ways beyond ER bedside care.  It is something in the nurses that helps them deal with intense issues and figure out how to help.  Carol, Cathy’s sister, shared that Cathy was born to be a helper.  We have been intrigued by Cathy’s ability to move beyond helping people in her day job at Planned Parenthood to also inspiring others with her recent Women’s Circles.  Her upcoming circle “is centered on the summer solstice which is about gathering and attuning to the cycles of nature, our own personal cycles and those of our communities.  Here we connect deeply to our truest desires and in turn are more easily able to manifest our dreams.”

Cathy shared, “In addition to having a career that aligns with my life purpose of empowering women to take control of their reproductive and sexual health. I also have the privilege of co-facilitating quarterly women’s  circles where we foster and build a sisterhood of women helping other women.”

Jeanmarie Loria